Shymbulak snow report
Central Asia's largest ski area, and still only about 20 km of piste on eight lifts, mostly intermediate. It opens in stages, a partial late-November start ahead of the full December opening. Off-piste is fenced and signed, and the boundary is enforced: skiers who crossed it in March 2025 triggered a slide that closed two lifts.
Kazakhstan · Asia · live from the weather model at 2260–3200 m
Conditions right now
Read at summit elevation the moment you opened this page.
Hourly windows, accumulation ranges, confidence and travel flags, or the transparent 0–100 Ski Meter score.
Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), adapted for display. Elevations are approximate published figures; forecasts are model estimates, not guarantees.
The mountain right now
The live freezing level drawn on the elevation profile. Above the snow line, precipitation falls and stays as snow.
Terrain shape is schematic; elevations are the resort's approximate published figures.
Why it snows here
The Zailiysky Alatau is the northernmost outlier of the Tien Shan, rising straight off the Kazakh steppe in one of the most oceanically remote places on Earth. The air is cold and dry, and winter carries only 30 to 35% of the annual precipitation. What saves it is the altitude gradient: totals climb to around 1,200 mm a year near 2,500 m, which is where the resort begins.
Reading Shymbulak like a forecaster
The number that matters most at Shymbulak is the difference between the base (2260 m) and the summit (3200 m): when the freezing level sits between the two, the mountain is split into rain or wet snow below and dry snow above. The Ski Meter reads the model at both elevations and scores the day with every point accounted for; the full report adds hourly timing, accumulation ranges and confidence tags so you can decide when to travel, not just whether.